American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West

by Nate Blakeslee

The idea that wolves might be the solution to Yellowstone’s problems surfaced as early as 1940, though it wasn’t until the 1970s that the federal government began seriously considering reintroduction. Elected officials in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana (the states surrounding the park) were adamantly opposed to the idea, in deference to two constituencies that exercised an outsize influence on local politics: ranchers and hunters. Ranchers, whose own ancestors had helped rid the mountains of predators in the first place, feared they’d lose livestock once the reintroduced wolves began spreading beyond the park’s boundaries. Elk-hunters, meanwhile, knew the wolves would be subsisting on the same game they cherished—and they’d only just won the fight to keep rangers from reducing elk numbers. From the hunters’ perspective, every elk taken by a wolf was a lost opportunity, and wolves ate a lot of elk.